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Three years after common pleas court judges in Franklin and three other counties launched a test
project to improve the handling of business lawsuits, a statewide task force has recommended that
the program become permanent.

The Ohio Supreme Court could decide as early as Sunday whether to accept the group’s
recommendations.

Under the test program, two common pleas judges each in Franklin, Cuyahoga, Hamilton and Lucas
counties were appointed to handle all business-to-business lawsuits, otherwise known as the
commercial docket.

The goal was to more efficiently handle the cases, among the most complicated and time-consuming
in the common pleas courts. The judges, including John P. Bessey and Richard A. Frye in Franklin
County, were selected in part because of their expertise in business law.

As proposed in 2007 by the late Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, the program was seen as a way to
enhance the state’s business climate.

“When making decisions to locate or remain in Ohio, employers assess a number of criteria,
including the prospect of costly and time-consuming civil litigation arising from commercial
transactions,” the task force wrote in its report.

At least 27 states have established commercial-docket programs, business courts or specialized
dockets for complex business cases.

“We want Ohio to have a reputation as a place where you won’t spend the rest of your life in
court if your business has a legal issue,” said Bessey, who co-chaired the task force. “If we can
do it right, it’s a wonderful asset for the state of Ohio.”

But doing it right, according to Bessey and other members of the task force, means giving the
commercial-docket judges a break on other cases so they can devote attention to the business
lawsuits.

The task force reported that their caseloads have “threatened to overwhelm” the
commercial-docket judges.

It recommended that judges appointed to handle the commercial docket receive a 50 percent
reduction in the number of criminal cases assigned to them.

Such a policy would mean more criminal cases for the other judges on the common pleas bench.

That isn’t sitting well with some of those judges, including Charles Schneider, administrative
judge for Franklin County Common Pleas Court.

Schneider said the recommendation would undermine the policy of randomly assigning criminal
cases to the county’s 17 common pleas judges.

“A (criminal) defendant won’t have a one-in-17 chance of getting any of the judges,” he
said.

Schneider said he will oppose continuing the commercial-docket program in Franklin County if the
Supreme Court accepts the recommendation regarding criminal cases. He wants the justices to give
the counties flexibility in how the docket is handled.

If the Supreme Court makes the program permanent, judges in each of the eligible counties will
vote on whether to participate.

Columbus lawyer Rex Elliott, who estimated that half his cases qualify for the commercial
docket, said he will be “very disappointed if the docket doesn’t become a permanent fixture.”

But the program “hasn’t been as useful as it can be,” he said, because the judges are “
overloaded.”

An online survey conducted in January by the Columbus Bar Association found that 68 percent of
the 57 lawyers who responded want the commercial docket to become permanent.

The survey also found that some respondents still think the handling of cases is too slow, with
some recommending that the judges in the program take fewer criminal cases, said David Bloomfield
Jr., bar association president.

Last year, each of the 17 common pleas judges in Franklin County was assigned an average of 401
criminal cases. If Judges Bessey and Frye had their criminal assignments cut in half, the criminal
caseload for each of the other judges would increase by about 27 cases, or a little more than two a
month.

Bessey and Frye each has about 145 cases pending on his commercial docket.

Examples of cases handled on the docket include the formation or liquidation of a business, the
rights of owners or shareholders in business disputes, trade secrets, employment agreements and
contract disputes between businesses.

In addition to proposing that the program continue in the four test counties, the task force
recommended that Butler, Lorain, Montgomery, Stark and Summit be eligible to establish a commercial
docket.